Jorge Campos / Tree Climbing

Another great weather day in DC leading up to practice and knowing how important the game is this weekend made it another day that I was really looking forward to getting on the field.  As normal our 15minute warm up by Coach Irizarry ran closer to 30 minutes so the players were definitely ready for the next part of practice and the GKs got an extended warm up with Coach Ouimet.  Luckily for Coach Irizarry the need for him to step into the goal today saved him from being fined for going over on the warm up and his display once again left people wondering if he really played in a National Championship in center midfield.  Staring to remind me of Jorge Campos for those of you who know he is?

The next part of practice was onto some crossing and finishing and I took the shooting group. Firstly though I have to tell you that today was another example of how players can take what you say verbatim.  Firstly the GK's in their warm up after I told them there was no need to use Coach Pasquinelli's equipment proceeded to then not use any of the numerous cones we have available and I saw 4 shinguards on the ground that they were using for their warm up.  Luckily they had decided to use some of the balls.  Then in my shooting after telling the players they had to get their own ball no matter where it went, the first ball had gone probably at least 30 foot over the crossbar and lodged in a tree.  To my amusement and obvious worry for his safety, I then saw a player climbing a tree behind the goal to try and retrieve his ball.  Awesome!!!

Anyways, I know on my end the players looked good in the shooting and as we moved into a game to finish the session, the intensity they had brought yesterday and today was evident as we played for just 15 minutes as I felt that was enough and we finished on a high with a goal from Valencia rounding off a nice passage of play.  Two more sessions before the game Sunday, a big weekend at Home before we leave on the road again the following weekend.

Raise High Moment of the Day
Bailey Hinners from the tree top to hitting a 30 yarder, 2 shots one into a different zip code the other breaking the goal net!!